Eric Dye

Proprietor of ChurchMag

I am a blogger, business owner and lover of coffee. I spend most of my time as Programs Director for Open Church, but you'll also find me as a writer and editor for ChurchMag and ChurchMag Press. All while enjoying my family and sipping espresso in Italy.

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Just a few things to point out here:
– shipments mean nothing. Sales and installed base do. As of right now, 73% of mobiles sold are not smartphones, and of those in use (installed base) that percentage is a tick higher (replacement cycle rate is at about 12-18 months depending on market, will take a long time before shipments make sense to be used here).

– contradicted yourself with two points: 4 billion mobiles in use refers to accounts, not devices. The devices number is about 3.1 billion. There are not 4 billion PC owners, that number has been pegged between 1.2 and 1.5 billion and holding steady for sometime now. The number of folks who go online with their mobile is at 1.1-1.3 billion, that’s the number thats getting higher than PCs and should be higher by Q1 next year.

Staggering? I guess so. But, from this end, those numbers mean nada when we (the Body) aren’t moving in that space in unity 😉

You now, the wonderful thing about sources is that you’re not responsible for their content, only for your interpretation of it. As such, I have to agree with Eric’s sentiments that mobile phones are indeed a force to be reckoned with. I came across this infographic (http://pinterest.com/pin/145944844145544922/) through a friend of mine that very much concurs with Eric’s points. With this infographic making mention of only 600 million active Facebook users, it IS a bit outdated. But that also means that the mobile thesis of their argument is that more stronger as the industry has grown.

But the more pertinent “proof” is the Facebook IPO results. There is a decline in investor confidence with one of their MAIN issues being the increase of smartphone usage and Facebook’s inability to generate ad revenue on them (http://www.investingdaily.com/15501/monetizing-mobile-facebooks-sponsored-stories-are-not-the-answer). Here are some of their stats:
1. More than half of Facebook’s 955 million users are using mobile
2. Facebook’s users increased by 29%, but their MOBILE usage increased by 67%

Mobile phones is indeed a force to be reckoned with. The Jedi’s need to watch out. 😉